ACP'S driver helped crack Delhi gang-rape case

It was probably the keen eye of a police driver which gave the cops the first lead which cracked the December 16 gang-rape case.

While several police teams under direct supervision of then Deputy Commissioner of Police of south Delhi -- Chhaya Sharma – were on their toes for clues, it was Constable Lukhvinder Singh’s observation and his boss Assistant Commissioner of Police Kulwant Singh ground work helped to nail the culprits.

Lukhvinder Singh is posted as a driver of Kulwant Singh, who is who heads Special Staff at south Delhi. “It was around 1: 50 am when I came to know about the incident. I went to Safdarjung Hospital.  After talking to the victim’s friend (Avninder Pratap Pandey) for a few minutes, I left for spot,” Kulwant Singh told Deccan Herald.

He got basic details like the colour of the bus in which the incident took place, it was a luxury bus, there was a strip in centre of the body of the bus and the back door was locked permanently from inside. He also got the basic details of the route and timing the accused has taken and where they were dumped.  Kulwant Singh left the hospital along with his driver towards Mahipalpur flyover where they were dumped. In between Safdarjung Hospital to Mahipalpur, they checked around three white colour buses but of no avail as they did not match the descriptions.

They reached the spot and knocked the door of the guest house opposite which the victims were dumped. “It was around 4 am. We first knocked the door of 37 Guest House and talked to the eyewitness. Seeing the crime spot, we found that the accused might have used service lane to ply the bus and not the flyover. We accordingly started knocking the guest houses and hotels on the service lanes and checking closed circuit television footages,” he said.  When they checked CCTV footage of the Airport Hotel, they found that the cameras covered the roads and they might be some chance to get some clue.

They went inside and asked the owner’s brother, who was managing the hotel at that time, to show the footage from 9:30 pm onwards.

Kulwant Singh was checking the footages and Lukhvinder was standing behind him. Kulwant Singh noticed a white bus with a label ‘Yadav’ on it travelling towards Gurgaon at 9: 34 pm. He again saw a white colour bus at 9: 53 pm.  However, Yadav was not clearly visible.  Lukhvinder told his boss it seems that it was a same bus which they saw in footage of 9: 34 pm. “I noticed that the wheel covers on back of tyres. When it was cross examined,  both buses in footage were same,” said Lukhvinder.

Kulwant Singh re-checked twice and found that the it was same bus as both of them were not having wheel covers of back  of tyres and have similar looks. 

“This how we got the first clue that it was a bus run by Yadav transport,” Lukhvinder said.